


Down By the Water

by Alley_Skywalker



Category: Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Memories, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-01 12:34:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20815226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alley_Skywalker/pseuds/Alley_Skywalker
Summary: Dolokhov finds himself there in the first summer after the war, kneeling in the soft, muddy earth by the water’s edge, the tall grass tickling his chin, hiding him from view of the dirt road.





	Down By the Water

There is a river in the countryside, some two days carriage ride from Moscow. It is so small and its path so short, that no one knows if it even has a name. It runs from a small, mossy pond into a shallow wood, and tapers out quickly into a stream, half-hidden among the boulders and bushes. There are little golden fish that play in its waters – few and far between, but eager in their frolics, free from any serious fishing, other than the occasional small boys who come to scoop them up out of the clear, shallow waters. The river cuts across grassy clearings, and winds around crop fields, just a short walk outside the bounds of two-three peasant villages. 

There are memories it carries, for Dolokhov at least.

He finds himself there in the first summer after the war, kneeling in the soft, muddy earth by the water’s edge, the tall grass tickling his chin, hiding him from view of the dirt road. He finds himself remembering two boys who played there as children, their white linen shirts stained with grass and their hair mussed by their games. 

Anatole had loved summers, with their long, languid days and the possibility of running barefoot like a serf boy might. He had glowed with all the warmth and brightness of a July sun at high noon – so beautiful and full of light it hurt. Though Dolokhov had not recognized the hurt then – he had been but a boy himself, his mind addled by childish things. 

Their summers had ended like so many things in Dolokhov’s life often did after – with a pistol shot at dawn and a murder of crows soaring through the air, spooked by the ruckus the humans had made. His life had turned to grey and black for a long time after that. Even Anatole, on coming to see him in Moscow, wore only dark blues and charcoal, as though trying to be respectful of the mourning his friend’s family was in. He’d had a hard time of it, poor boy, never quite knowing how to handle a situation with too much sadness and not enough room for jokes and laughter.

Dolokhov had not had enough heart to care then. 

They came back to the country some years later, to the Kuragin estate, together, holding hands in the privacy of the carriage, only to let go once they stepped into the sun. Before they had been free to be their happiest and most natural in the daylight. But by the time they returned they had grown and were expected to present themselves a certain way, to keep up certain decorum. 

Children may love freely for all to see. Men have no such liberties. 

They came out to the small river that summer, the first time during the day, the rest of the times at dusk. Dolokhov can still remember Anatole laughing, “it had seemed so much wider when we were children.”

“Everything had seemed wider—bigger. Better.”

“Perhaps not everything.” 

If they had kissed in the fading light, lying in the tall grass with the stars coming into focus above them, it was nobody’s business but theirs. Dolokhov remembers thinking that he didn’t even think, back then, that it was his own business. What was Anatole but a spoiled, beautiful boy with lips that taste like strawberries and hands as soft as a girl’s? And laughter as free and light as the wind. 

What is Anatole now but a memory of a bright summer – of so many summers – and of a cold, biting winter, whose glittering snowdrifts hide sheets of treacherous black ice and sinkholes of city-stained slush?

What is Anatole now but the memory of a kiss and of warm hands, of a husky voice speaking tender words that mean nothing and everything at once?

What is Anatole now but the memory of friendship and warmth and endless joy that Dolokhov had never quite understood but had been drawn to like a moth to a candle, his entire being revolting against the unnaturalness of such carefree splendor and yet longing for it all the same?

Anatole is nothing now but earth and a wooden cross and a black ribbon on an old, weather-worn uniform jacket. Nothing but a regret and an unshed tear and a hurt that Dolokhov thinks he finally recognizes. 

“I love you,” he says to the clear, sparking waters of _their _river. It gurgles up at him with the phantom laughter of a boy as bright and warm as the sun: _I loved you, too. _


End file.
